One of the most popular materials for the construction of walls used in contempory buildings is kiln-fired brick. In addition to its strong aesthetic appeal, brick has proved to be a durable, long lasting and maintaince free material, suitable for both interior and exterior walls. Unfortunately, conventional brick wall construction requires substantial time and highly skilled labor for erection. In conventional brick construction, a highly skilled brick layer is required to individually align and secure each individual brick upon a layer of carefully applied mortor. Since the typical brick is relatively small (a typical construction brick is in order of 8 in..times.21/4 in..times.4 in.), any sizable brick wall construction requires considerable time, even for a highly skilled brick layer.
In recent years, the time and relatively high cost of conventional brick construction has lead to the use of face-brick veneer panel sliding construction. In the typical face-brick veneer siding panel, a plurality of face-brick veneer components, typically of 1/2 inch in thickness, are secured by an adhesive in aligned relationship onto a panel board of polystyrene at a factory. The panel board is typically in the order of 48 inches by 161/2 inches in size, with the brick faces being rigidly secured to a planar side of the panel by an adhesive. During erection, the panel board is installed as a single unit with the brick faces secured thereto. A steel angle is first installed at the bottom of a wall to which the face-brick veneer is to be secured. Bottom panels are then supported on the steel angle along the entire length of the proposed wall with successive panels being supported on their immediate subjacent panel. The top of each of the panels are secured to the wall by a metal clip. Once installation of the brick-faced veneer siding is completed, a mortor machine is used to apply mortor between the brick faces, resulting in an appearance which is virtually indistinguishable from conventional brick construction.
Prior art brick veneer panel construction has not been without its disadvantages, however. During the process of securing the brick faces to the panel board at the factory, it is necessary to lay the panels and the brick faces flat and undisturbed in aligned relationship with the board and each other until the adhesive dries, a process which may take several days. Thereafter, the resulting brick faced panel is relatively heavy (the typical panel has approximately 36 brick faces) and thus difficult to handle manually and expensive to transport. Moreover, during installation of this brick face siding, the substantial weight of the brick faces on the board reduces working efficiency during erection. Furthermore, due to the weight of the brick material and the bending moment exerted on the adhesive interface between the brick and the panel, it has not feasible to adhesively secure standard full size brick (4 inches in thickness) to a panel according to prior art methods. The resulting inavailability of standard full size brick has significantly reduced the marketability of brick-faced veneer construction as many consumers have a strong preference for full size bricks.